Copenhagen: Climate Change Affects More Than Polar Bears (PHOTOS)

A forlorn polar bear sitting on a small piece of ice in a wide blue sea is a powerful image for many people. It says: "we are changing the Earth's climate, destroying its wildlife and we ought to do something about it". But it just makes plenty of other people angry. Since writing a book about the changing Arctic with that image on its cover I've run into a lot of the angry people. The sad bear is just a symbol of liberals who put animals before people: let nature takes its natural course and if that means the bear goes extinct that is just fine. It is nothing to do with us and certainly not worth spending a lot of money to stop.

Well, I have a message for all these guys. The Arctic is getting angry too. Climate change may seem as if it is a worry just for the people who want to "save the planet" but really it is about saving our current standard of living. And once you get the Arctic angry it will go for a long, slow revenge. No sudden disasters that can be ended quickly if we all rally to action. The Arctic will go for a thousand years of endless pressure, unstoppable and inevitable, that humans are just hopeless at dealing with collectively: you only have to look at the delay and bickering of Copenhagen after more than a decade of climate negotiations.

Greenland is a good place to get a good sense of what the Arctic has in mind. Start with a walk in the eastern suburb of the town of Ilulissat. People don't live there. It is reserved for sled dogs and you can wander, very cautiously, among some very fierce chained-up Greenlandic huskies and friendly sled puppies. The strange thing is that there are empty kennels everywhere. In 2002, 4,700 sled dogs lived here, a little more than the town's human residents. Now the number is less than 3,000. The ice is disappearing and the locals are trading in dogs for boats. Go down to the shore and you'll see open blue water now and sailing along in it are stupendous numbers of gigantic icebergs. That's our first sign of the Arctic's revenge.

The monster bergs are breaking off the Jakobshavn Glacier. Ten huge ice streams drain the enormous mass of Greenland's ice cap and this is the greatest of them all. It is almost two miles wide. In 1992, it was crawling to the sea at a steady 3.5 miles a year. By 2003 it was roaring along at 7.8 miles a year, spewing icebergs. As the glacier moved faster, the ice deeper within the ice cap that fed it began to thin. Greenland holds a staggering amount of ice and it is rushing for the exit.

If all 700,000 cubic miles of it were to melt away, sea level would rise by around twenty-three feet, causing an unimaginable catastrophe. That won't happen quickly but the melt is speeding up. Eventually it will reach a tipping point when the top of the ice has melts to a lower elevation where the air is warm. Then there is no stopping sea level rise for a thousand years or more, especially as the Antarctic joins in. Goodbye Manhattan, London, Holland...
Up on the ice cap and across the tundra rimming the Arctic seas, the air is warming rapidly too. With temperatures rising, odd streams of gas have begun bubbling from tundra lakes. You can find out what it is by just lighting a match: stand well back so you don't lose your hair as it explodes. It is methane, generated as micro-organisms begin to break down the thawing organic material at the lake bottom. It is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the Arctic is full of it. Out in the shallow Arctic seas, too, bubbling streams of methane are appearing where there were none before.

Away from the lakes, the frozen ground--permafrost--is rotting away as it thaws, pouring out carbon dioxide. There is enough carbon stored in the permafrost to raise global temperatures an average of 12 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, this carbon will not all be released at once. The Arctic really goes for a long, slow settling of scores. It will thaw over hundreds of years, endlessly pushing up global temperatures.

Wouldn't it be better to halt these changes now, rather than facing the Arctic's revenge? You don't have to worry about polar bears, just what it is going to mean for you and generations to come.

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"After the Ice" Pt. 2

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Will these puppies ever get to pull a sled? That is what they are bred for but in the Greenlandic town of Ilulissat the areas reserved for huskies are full of vacant lots and empty kennels. The sea ice is going and the locals are selling dogs to buy boats.
(Image Henni Christensen: see more of this Danish photographer’s work at http://pictureaday.net/tag/Greenland.aspx)

Beyond the town is a clear blue sea and enormous flotillas of icebergs spewing from the Greenland ice cap as its glaciers flow faster and faster. All that ice plus meltwater from the ice cap is pushing up world sea levels.

Why is it happening? Take a trip up on to the ice cap to find out. There is an easy ten mile hike up there which starts above the Eqi glacier.

Along the route you’ll pass but perhaps never see some Arctic inhabitants. This ptarmigan won’t leave its nest and relies on camouflage to keep it safe from Arctic foxes—not always successfully. Sometimes just a few feathers remain.

Once starting up on the ice you just need to walk very carefully and use a long pole to probe for crevasses. The ice goes on for six hundred miles all the way to the other side of Greenland.

Soon you see signs of rising temperatures. Rivers of crystal blue meltwater flow across the undulating plain of ice. Greenland summer air temperatures are rising 1.5C every ten years and the length of the melt season has more than doubled.

This is what we have come to see. Melt rivers suddenly vanish down a hole in the ice. The rush of foaming water amid the brilliant blue of the ice is spectacular. So too is the slipperiness of the ice; one mistake and you will drown deep inside the glacier’s plumbing. That melt water is reaching the bottom of the ice and helping lubricate its slide to the sea.

Add that to the more powerful impact of warmer sea water getting under the glacier snouts and this is the result: fast flowing glaciers calving mega-bergs. On a grey day they are full of menace: the berg that sank the Titanic came from here.
(Image Henni Christensen: http://pictureaday.net/tag/Greenland.aspx)

When the sun shines the colors of the icebergs sparkle and from its sculpted form you can figure out its history. Smooth surfaces were underwater before the berg capsized and brought them up above the sea.

All bergs end this way, melting away into nothingness.

As the Arctic ice melts, polar bears find they need to swim. As the Greenland ice melts, we will need to swim too, especially if you live in a coastal city or a low-lying nation. There is enough ice in Greenland alone for a 23-foot sea level rise. And once the Arctic’s revenge gets going, it won’t be easy to stop for hundreds or thousands of years.